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Monday, January 16, 2017

Under This Leaden Sky

One thing I like is pulp-detective shows and films. I have to be careful because the bleakness can overwhelm the soul, but they do a good job of bracing my soul. The best ones are the ones that are self-defeating. The difference, for me, between a detective show and a cop show, is that the former does not valorize any institution. Usually the police are part of the problem, and sometimes the detective has unwittingly, or wittingly, been participating in corruption for whatever reason. I suppose this is my own personal attraction to the story of Samson.

However, I like these because, through those broken eyes and gravely voices, one sees the World as the World. In other words, this is to recognize the Fall in-itself. One thing Marxism, as a political theory, does, at its root, is to offer a similar appraisal. It sees clearly things in light of the Fall. This is an examination of things tightly wound in the bonds of necessity, where life is a fragile and fleeting reality. This is the world ruled by the god of This Age, the Devil. Sergei Bulgakov, an ex-Marxist who turned to Christ, appreciated this similar feature about this. In This Age, where Mammon rules, things seem desolate. Here's a quote from him, it's worthy of reflection:

In the current empirical world, "life lives" only in a constant struggle with death. The "organic" world, the kingdom of life in its various forms, is surrounded by a hostile atmosphere of death, of the deadened and mechanistic, of stifling necessity. Under "the heavy shroud of graying skies", under this leaden sky, on a poisoned, plague-ridden earth, life seems a sort of accident, an oversight or indulgence of the part of death. Encircled by a ring of death, constantly threatened by the yawning abyss of nonbeing, life timidly and stingily huddles in the corners of the universe, saving itself from final extermination only through terrible struggle. For if it cannot be completely exterminated, life is constantly in the process of being destroyed as it becomes the prey of nonbeing, waiting to strike from all sides and in all guises. Life is not separated from nonbeing by an impenetrable wall that would make these attempts futile. It is imperfect in itself, for it is fragile, temporary, mortal.